Friday, December 9, 2016

We all know that I don't have very much luck when it comes to love. People who like me tend to be into some sort of criminal activity (my prom date was recently released from jail after serving 8 years for a drug-related murder), people that I like are usually not interested, and during those rare times where the universe aligns and the person that I find attractive also thinks I'm pretty, I never seem to be quite good enough to date. I have had three separate occasions where things seem to be going really well with someone, then they go on some sort of outdoor adventure and at some point during their commune with nature they decide that they are no longer interested. Or they just want to sleep with me for 10 years but then date someone else. Because of this, people have been telling me to try online dating, especially Tinder. I had always refused, since I have never felt the need to include the internet into the clusterfuck that is my love life. Until I got my shelf.

Back in February, I ordered a shelf off of Amazon, because I wanted a little place to store all of the stuff that was on my floor. Apparently I am really bad at knowing how sizes work, because when the shelf got to my house it was in a box that was almost as tall as me. I opened it, and the first thing the instructions said was "shelf requires two or more people to put together". I was in a little bit of a friend drought at that point, so I was like "well......fuck". Then I thought about it a little bit harder and was like "haha that would make a really funny Tinder bio". I then proceeded to leave the pieces of shelf on my floor and go about my day. A week later, I still had shelf pieces on my floor, and I was like "huh. I wonder if I really could get someone off of Tinder to build me a shelf. And maybe get a boyfriend out of it. Or at least meet someone cool. Even if that doesn't work, at least it'll be a really funny story". So with visions of sexy construction workers dancing in my head, I set up my profile, and all I put in the bio was "I bought a shelf that requires two people to put together, so if someone could help me out that would be great". Then I started swiping.....

[Pause for dramatic effect]

Holy shit y'all, I hate Tinder. This app is the worst. First of all, it showed me how disgustingly shallow I am. I very well could have swiped left on my soulmate, but I would have no idea because his face didn't catch my attention in the first .07 seconds of seeing his profile. Seriously, I didn't even look at the bio unless I decided the person was attractive. It also gave me a weird sense of power, so I would start flying through them, swiping left just for the sake of swiping; but at the same time I wanted to personally apologize and assure all of them that they would find a different girl who would love them for who they were. It was very weird. I also didn't really understand how it worked, so I kept accidentally super liking people that I didn't even mean to match with, or I would get so into swiping that I would accidentally swipe left on a babe and then be super grumpy about the entire thing. Plus the people who liked me tended to look just a little bit off, like they had a weird week back in 2007 where they had casually dabbled with meth. One excellent example of this is Michael (age 30) who used his mugshot as a profile picture and said he was a "professional at pretending things are wonderful". I'm pretty sure Michael had done a little bit more than casually dabbling in meth.

The people that I matched with really didn't end up being any better. A surprising amount of people thought that "help me build my shelves" was a code for some sort of sex thing, and others were super judgmental, telling me that "assembling stuff from Ikea really isn't that difficult". Then I had to be like "um ok thanks it's not even from Ikea". My personal favorite response was from some guy who told me that he would help me with my shelves on the condition that one of us would be "in the nude". His words, not mine. I politely declined, because naked construction seems awkward and potentially dangerous, since there is a lot of possibility for pinching. Then he told me that I obviously was not very committed to getting my shelves built and I was like "boy bye". I had all but given up hope when I finally matched with Matt (not his actual name, but I'm not changing it to protect his privacy, I just don't remember what his name was) who seemed super cute and incredibly normal. We talked for a little bit, then decided to meet up for dinner the next day. The date was............fine. There was no spark, but he seemed like a nice guy and he said that he would call me so he could help me with my shelves that weekend. Remember, this was in February. The next time I heard from him was when he texted me in June asking if I still needed help with my construction needs.

In case anyone is wondering, I ended up deleting Tinder and just put the shelves together by myself because I am a strong, independent woman who don't need no man.